Aus­tralian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ash­ley Gilbert­son doc­u­ment­ed for The New York Times the US inva­sion of Iraq, cap­tur­ing the light­ning fast over­throw of Sad­dam’s regime and then the slow lapse into civ­il war. His new book, Whiskey Tan­go Fox­trot: A Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Chron­i­cle of the Iraq War, col­lects some of his best work. Com­bined, the print­ed pho­tographs offer what he calls a visu­al “tes­ta­ment to what war actu­al­ly is.” They let you see how deci­sions made by the Pen­ta­gon have real human costs on the ground in Iraq; or, put a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly, the pho­tos illus­trate in stark detail “what for­eign pol­i­cy looks like from the ground up.” Below, you can watch a video that fea­tures an intel­li­gent inter­view with Gilbert­son and offers a good glimpse into his pho­to­graph­ic work. Def­i­nite­ly give it some of your time.

Spe­cial Note: Sup­port an Inde­pen­dent Press

We all know that an inde­pen­dent press is absolute­ly essen­tial to pre­serv­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic and open cul­ture. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, more than 80 per­cent of peo­ple live in coun­tries with­out a free press. That means more than 5 bil­lion peo­ple can’t trust what they read in the news­pa­per, hear on the radio or see on TV. Here is a very tan­gi­ble way to empow­er inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. Con­tribut­ing $100 to the Media Devel­op­ment Loan Fund will pro­vide inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists with print­ing press­es and broad­cast­ing equip­ment, tools that are essen­tial to over­com­ing cen­sor­ship and giv­ing a voice to the unheard. Click here to get more infor­ma­tion.

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